


Radio Silence

by greatestvoyagehistoryofplastic



Category: Nothing Much to Do, nmtd
Genre: Drabbles, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2169699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatestvoyagehistoryofplastic/pseuds/greatestvoyagehistoryofplastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shot ficlets written during and about the radio silence after Hero's birthday party and the reasons for each character allowing it to go on. Contains possible spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beatrice

The blue of the “Twitter” screen felt as if it was searing into Bea’s skull. After a last tearful phone call her aunts, she had tossed and turned fitfully for several hours, her mind an unhelpful, loud mass of speeches and images from the last 24 hours, before falling exhaustedly into a deep sleep full of uneasy dreams that she couldn’t now remember. She’d woken at nearly midday, feeling as clammy and exhausted as if she’d just been pulled from a bog, to an eerily silent house and 2 empty beds instead of cousins. The only truly coherent thought that Bea had managed since was that people needed to know. They needed to know what had happened to Hero.

The little text cursor blinked at her and she typed some random letters just to make it stop. Words… usually she was good at them, it was unusual to find none inside her.

She let herself think about the previous night for a minute, she hadn’t been good at words then either, had let Claud say those things that had done so much harm without a witty reproof in sight, just stood there and gaped until he’d gone and the damage was done. She had failed and Hero could have died.

“You are _not_ crying twice in two days” she told herself sharply. She was meant to be the strong one who protected and challenged and fought and made people laugh, not any of this shit. She scrubbed at her eyes with the bottom of her t-shirt and sniffed so hard that it made her lungs burn.

The icon was blinking again; she closed Twitter.

Maybe she should message someone? She thought. Maybe she could ask someone else to do this for her. But the only people she would have trusted enough were Hero and… well, someone who she would never make the mistake of trusting again. A small voice inside her whispered Ben’s name but she firmly ignored it along with the remembrance of his expression as he’d left the previous night. It felt disloyal to think about things like that right now, she couldn’t think about him at all without becoming far too distracted. So there was no one then. She sighed and slammed down the lid of her laptop.


	2. Balthazar

Balth had been writing lyrics in the garden when he’d got the text:

“I think I did something really wrong. Come over?- P”

He stared at the message. It really didn’t sound like Pedro, there were no jokes, no pre-amble at all. Maybe someone had stolen his phone and sent it as a joke? Balth knew he’d been at a party the previous night so that probably was what had happened … but even so, something about it made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“Sure,” he typed. “be there in 10”

After all, if it _had_ been a joke he knew Pedro would just text him back and say so, he wasn’t the kind of person who let things get out of hand.

Just then, Balth’s Mum came out with two glasses of lemonade and stretched herself out in the sun next to him.

“Texting anyone nice Stan?” She asked sleepily from behind her huge sunglasses. She’d been out on a date the previous night, (Leaving Balth to babysit his little sister and therefore unable to attend any birthday parties.) and it seemed like she’d ended up drinking a bit too much wine.

He shrugged. “Nah. Well yeah but no one different. I mean, just Pedro.”

She squinted at him. (Or at least he thought she did, the sunglasses were very disorientating.) “The same one who said that beautiful song you did was “hilarious”?”

“Yeah.” The shirt Balth was wearing was really tight around the neck, he wondered that he’d never noticed that before. “But, I mean, he’s still… we’re still friends.”

Mum seemed unimpressed. “Well, whatever you think best baby. But be careful alright? It’s hard enough to get over someone even when you never see them. Speaking of which, are you seeing your Dad today?”

Balth thought for a moment… wavered and then: “Yeah, I’ll go after I’ve finished this” He waved the lyrics notebook, a present from Pedro on his last birthday.

His Mum smiled and started flicking through her magazine, and Balth deleted his text and wrote in its place “Can’t right now, sorry.”

Mum was right, even if it hurt: if he was going to have to be just friends with Pedro then he definitely needed more space from him and there was no time like the present to start. After all, if it was a real emergency Pedro had Claudio, and Ben, and Beatrice to help him sort it out.


	3. Meg

Meg clicked “Refresh” on Beatrice’s Twitter profile for the hundredth time.

This really _wasn’t_ her, Meg decided. It was just frustrating and pointless and she couldn’t understand how people like Ben seemed to do it every other week to find out something tiny about whatever sci fi show it was that he never shut up about. This was actually about something important and she was as bored as hell.

“This is the last time” she told herself. After this she would leave and find something fun to do, maybe a boy who wasn’t a lying psychopath would be nice, and just rely on Bea texting her news when she could. That would be way better than just sitting there.

Wait how long had she been thinking for? There could be news by now! Even a video of Hero back home and laughing about it all and ready for Meg to show up and explain everything!

… Or just the same old tweet from 20 hours ago, from just before everything went nightmare.

Half an hour before Claudio revealed everything, all but killed her friend and made her feel like the worst low-life to have ever walked the planet.

45 minutes before she’d screamed at Robbie down the phone.

An hour before the ambulance left.

Two hours before she’d smashed one of the windows of Robbie’s car and flipped off his screaming Dad before running off into the night.

Four hours before she’d cried herself to sleep and got mascara all over her pillow.

“So… only the second worst party I’ve been to this month” She thought ruefully.

She scrolled down a bit, she almost knew every tweet by heart at this point, but the selfie of her and Bea when she’d just arrived at Hero’s still made her feel faintly sick. If only she’d known then.

Even now, if she wanted, she could go to Claud or Pedro’s house and tell them how wrong they were. She could go and check how Beatrice was doing, if she hadn’t probably gone to the hospital or fallen asleep or something. And Bea would be so angry. So, so angry. She could go and break more of Robbie’s stuff. Maybe his face.

She really should go out _somewhere_ , but just one more refresh first. Just in case.


	4. Ursula

Ursula was… well, asleep.

She had waited until the ambulance left, given Beatrice a hug and promised to get the video up, to _show_ people, as fast as she could.

After she’d raced home, Ursula had had to garble an edited version of events to her parents. She wasn’t completely sure that she’d been understandable, but they’d at least left her alone with the desktop and not asked too many more questions.

Convincing them that what she was doing was important enough for a sleepless night had been another matter.

“I know that you’re working hard for a friend and that is wonderful my treasure, but teenagers need sleep.” Her Mother had said before snapping off the light and shooing Ursula towards her bedroom.

Ursula was a good listener and she liked and loved her parents very much, but she also hoped that she made good decisions for herself, and she was also very good at being quiet.

So by 5am she’d edited what needed to be edited (Even to almost her best standard), rendered the whole thing and just managed to start the upload onto YouTube when she was discovered by her youngest brother.

“Hey Tristan” She managed to say casually and calmly, although her voice was quite groggy by this point.

“Why you so eeearly?” He asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the leg of a mangled looking bear.

“Oooh I…” She stifled a yawn “I just couldn’t sleep. Did you see if Ma ma and Ba ba are awake yet?”

Tristan shook his head and said “Sleeeeping like a baby” in a voice that meant he’d copied it off a film.

Ursula tried to smile. “That’s good, stay shh shh then, and back to bed.”

Her brother gave her a look of pure calculation. “Ursula’s got to come too.”

She tried to stare him down but then he crossed his eyes and she had to stifle a giggle. YouTube said her video would take 5 more hours to upload… she really should have resisted making it an AVI. And it was always a good idea to check it was okay on Private before publishing too so that would be more time.

“Okay,” She turned to her brother. “I will sit in bed with you and tell you one story about anything you want. But only if you promise to pinch me very hard if I fall asleep. This is a matter of love and life and sort of death and Tris don’t pick your nose. Deal?”

Tristan nodded solemnly.

Even before the party Ursula had been exhausted. Rustic holidays with small children were never restful. So at 3pm she was still asleep, the video wasn’t up and her parents had been told that she’d been found on the computer at 5am.

4 year olds are not to be trusted.


End file.
